


when the sun sets on you and i

by Nimravidae



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Attempted Murder, Brainwashing, Canon Era, Forced Sleep Deprivation, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 14:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11420307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: Benjamin is tortured by the British and returns to camp suspiciously changed. Whatever ideas Simcoe planted in his head seem to linger, and Benjamin finds himself wholly convinced that Washington betrayed him.





	when the sun sets on you and i

**Author's Note:**

> FBFA Charitable Donation. 
> 
> Contains many dubious plot elements.

 

They do not question Ben’s return. He returns to camp, no trade, no drums, no fife. He returns on his own feet, in his own boots, with his own uniform splattered in his own blood.

When he arrives at the entrance to General Washington’s _(fraud)_ tent, the man’s face drains of blood as though a ghost has manifest itself before him instead. He throws himself back from his desk, Hamilton _(bastard)_ babbles incoherently at him, confused and ruddy-cheeked and tripping over his own stockings to Benjamin’s side. As though he truly meant the words he whispered at nights.

“What happened to you, Major?” Washington _(liar)_ gasps, his hands scraping down the blood-rough fabric of his jacket. “How did you manage your release?”

“I escaped, sir, from the British camps,” Benjamin lies in return. He did not escape, he was released. He was released because he finally understood that no man can break the ice in sharp-blue eyes. That no man can steal into a General’s heart the way Benjamin thought he did. They stole his sleep with buckets of water over his head, they hit him and bloodied him and beat him until he listened to them. Washington was a liar. Washington never loved him. Washington was using him.

Washington was using them all.

He doesn’t believe in the war. He doesn’t believe in the cause. He does not believe in any of them.

And Benjamin knows this now. He knows this as Hamilton _(whore)_ quits the tent in search of a medic, as per Washington’s _(liar)_ request. But the General does not wait, the General never waits. No, he is needy and selfish in his desires. Benjamin knows, they told him. Washington _(greedy)_ strips the jacket off his shoulders. Then his belt and his weapons, in search of blood and gore, or perhaps flesh and pleasure.

There was once a time, before he was shown the truth, that it would make Benjamin’s very flesh tremble in anticipation. It would make him thicken in his breeches and spend in hands and mouths. It would make him arch and twist and melt and purr out _George,_ until he was breathless. Being touched by him was Godly, once. But now it turns his skin to slime and his breath to bile in his throat.

All he can hear is that piercing voice perforating his mind, hissing into his ear, _He doesn’t really care for you. He only uses you. A tool. A means to an end._

It’s all he can feel, the hands of a liar peeling away his neckcloth and pressing fervent kisses to the newly exposed flesh. He doesn’t want to believe, he doesn’t want to think that he could ever be so foolish as to let someone twist him up and confuse him between right and wrong. But his arguments had made such sense, they seemed so wonderfully sound.

If Washington _(selfish)_ cared for him with all the same dutiful reverence that Benjamin did for him, then why did he take on his other whores? Why did he bed Hamilton _(slut)_ and the Marquis de Lafayette _(sycophant)_ in addition? Why did he pick and choose and wage his bed warmers against one another? Why did he shun the responsibilities of his marriage and risk casting his wife into such shame?

If he, the General, the man always above him, cared as much as he claimed, why does he let his men suffer? Why does he let them starve, why does he let them rot, why does he let them die? Washington’s hands find his flesh and Benjamin shoves them off himself as if they were burning iron brands into him. He steps back sharply and Washington’s head tilts and his lips twist into that knowing frown.

“Have I injured you? Please, undress yourself and allow me to inspect. The medic should be here shortly, of course, if you wish to wait for a more professional opinion.”

Washington is selfish. He’s greedy, he lies. He twists the words and molds the truth. Washington only cares for himself. He repeats the mantra in a voice that sounds like Simcoe’s, fingers sliding silently to the buttons of his shirt. He should take it off. He should strip himself down to bare flesh and expose himself to the prodding and scarring fingers of Washington.

He should pretend as though nothing is wrong, as though he hasn’t seen the truth with his own eyes. As though he has never known what honesty is.

But his hands shake when he tries to unclasp his shirt. They tremble visibly against the blood-stained linen and he cannot slip the buttons, it is not possible, it is not possible. He can feel Washington’s eyes, he can feel the burning of stomach bile in his throat and lining his tongue. He does not Washington to see him.

He does not want to be used again, to be taken and twisted so that he enjoys the rough touch of a heretic.

The rushing sound of his own breath grates like the horses that fell to the heat at Monmouth.

Washington’s voice comes low, “Sit, Major.” It is a command.

He sits, in a chair gestured to, even if he does not want to. He sits, back stiff and teeth clenched, until Colonel Hamilton slips through the part in the tent flaps, cheeks ruddy and breathing quickened.

“They were not kind,” the medic ascertains, upon his arrival.

And Benjamin, that night, while lying on his bedroll, dreams of how unkind they were. So many days where they forbid sleep, conscripting other officers to douse him in buckets of water and snow when he began to dose. He could not remember how long they kept him awake, how long they hissed and sneered in his face, telling him all the things he’d become under Washington’s tutelage.

 _Slut,_ they called him. _Washington’s least favorite pet whore. He led you into a trap, he wanted you captured by us._

He tried to say no, at first. Before he started to consider it as a possibility. He tried to argue, even after that, but they had glimpsed his weakness, they had shoved their knives into the crack in his armor and twisted until they gave. Washington sent him to that campsite. Washington told him it was abandoned. Washington sent him into the maw of the beast alone and unprepared. Washington had tricked him.

Washington had lied to him.

Washington had always lied to him.

When he closes his eyes, he sees the redcoats faces. When silence reigns, he hears them. When his own fingers ghost over purple-mottled bruises, he feels them.

Haunting him though they live still. That night, when he finally decided that sleep will come no more, after pacing for so long, he sits himself on the edge of his bedroll and takes stock of himself in the candlelight. They had made sure the cuts to his chest and back were cleaned and the bruises that discolored his arms and legs and cheek were nothing more than superficial. His uniform was nearly beyond saving, but Anna had decided to see to that herself after thoroughly inspecting him the moment he returned to his tent. He wanted to tell her about Washington, but he couldn’t force the words past his throat.

He couldn’t share the truth of what he learned, and he still does not know why.

Benjamin stares at his hands. He clenches one into a fist. Then the other. It is best she doesn’t know, he tells himself. If she did, he would hurt her. He would send her away to be trapped and rendered bloody and bruised and sleepless. He cannot let that happen, he tells himself, which is why he will not tell her.

He will not tell her, who trusts the General.

He will not tell Hamilton, who so often too warms his bed.

He will not tell Caleb, who would be reckless.

He will not tell anyone, he decides. He will keep this truth to himself, and he will make it right. In the distance, across his tent, the candle he lit flickers. He looks up from his hands, unclenching and clenching, and draws out the shape of his pistol in the shadows.

Washington is not the General the army needs, Washington is betraying them all.

He will make it right.

Sleep does not come, but Benjamin does not mind. When he closes his eyes, he feels the burning of ropes biting into his wrists. He feels the sharpness of blades on his chest.

Like a peaceful slumber, vindication does not come easily. Washington visits him, and when he does not find his way to Benjamin’s camp, he sends one of the other aides or guard to fetch him to his own headquarters.

“You look ill,” the liar says, lips pinching to a tight frown. “Have you been visiting the doctor?”

“No, sir.” He has been too busy concocting his plans, too busy unthreading them and stringing them back together. Too busy to see anyone, too busy to decode the latest missive. Too busy for sleep. “I have been feeling much better than I had previously, anyway.”

Another frown, some sort of twisted portrayal of faux-pity and faux-empathy. “Have you slept at all, my boy?” Washington is standing before him now, in the sort of dizzy, hazy, blink that Benjamin has been susceptible to in the past day. Or two. Perhaps more, time passed so poorly in his darkened tent. Caleb brought him food that he could not stomach enough to touch. It is the same food stolen from farms. The same food killed for. Stained in the blood of innocents because Washington said it must be, and so it was so.

“May I inquire why I was summoned, your Excellency?” He feels how cold he sounds. Icier than the roads that trap them in a winter encampment. Than the snowfall, than the eyes of the General before him.

Washington’s eyes find the desk. When Benjamin had not known the truth, when he hadn’t been shown the error of his ways in trusting the General, he had once thought to know that expression. The way his brows furrowed and he cast his eyes about his desk as though somewhere in its well-contained edges was the answer to whatever he struggled so wholly with was there. His frowns are different, less taut and disapproving and more shamed and internalized.

Benjamin does not like them.

He does not like the way his stomach twists with fire, the way he feels so terrible and vindicated all at once. It hurts him to see Washington, the liar, the traitor, the one who pushed him into the fires of Hell themselves, pained so deeply. But it is not his fault. It is not his fault. It is _not_ his fault.

It was Washington to blindfolded him and walked him to the slaughter. With no mercy, no warning, no protection. Washington who hurt him.

Washington, who’s time it is to hurt. (His heart throbs badly as he thinks of it. His head throbs badly, in addition. He can’t stop hearing Simcoe’s voice, sneering in his ear and sending revolted shivers down his spine).

“Do you remember Thomas Hickey, Benjamin?” He uses his first name, and the rage is back. He discarded his right to use it the moment Benjamin learned he was lying. He should have never had the right to speak his name, to whisper it reverently into his ear as he did at night. He should never have allowed him.

He feels his lips curl downward, however. “Thomas Hickey, the traitor? Has there been word of another plot on your life?”

It makes him sick. He wishes it was because it is his duty to remove Washington from his post, and not simply because he remembers that nettle-like pain in his throat when he first realized the attack, when he first learned of the near-cost they were forced to pay. But no! No, he cannot think like that, that is the thought of fools, of cowards, of those who do not know the truth of Washington. He would gladly send his men to die for no reason. He would gladly send Benjamin to die, for nothing. For nothing than to be rid of him.

Rage twists with conflict and confusion and he does not know which to manage first or if he should be managing them at all. He’s lost grip on his proper at-ease stance, but he can only feel the heaviness of his own heart and chest in the moment. Washington wished him dead. He knows, because they told him, and they told him and it was true. It had to be true. It is true.

Washington wished him dead, and now he stands before him, discussing traitors and hangings.

Traitors, such as him. Traitors, such as the one that looks at him with such a wonderful masquerade of pity and concern. Traitors, such as the one who reach for him. Washington is a traitor, a liar, a liar, a traitor. He wanted Benjamin dead. He’s a liar, a traitor a liar--

It happens so quickly, a moment and a flash at once. Benjamin’s fingers close around the handle of the silver letter-opener. The only thing in his reach. His brain moves sluggishly, stumbling to keep up with the rage-fire burning of his body as every beat of his heart screams out _liartraitorliartraitorliartraitor._

His swing stops short, just as pain blooms fresh and sharp in his forearm. His arm’s stiff, unmoving and so near to him, nearer than he was just a moment ago--Washington watches him with eyes overflowing with so many things at once that Benjamin cannot count them all. Fear and shame and confusion and pain and, God, so much pain.

For a moment, a brief, fulfilling, moment, Benjamin can feel the scrape of rope around his neck.

But Washington does not shout, and no guards come for him.

His lips part and, for a moment, neither man says a thing. Benjamin can feel his heartbeat in the bruises that the British laid against his body when he refused to accept the truth. The hand grasping his arm slackens and the blade clatters to the ground, abandoned.

“My God,” Washington says, voice so quiet Benjamin’s ears are strained to hear. “What have they done to you?”

 _They?_ He wants to shout, _They did nothing. You did this. You used me. You lied to me._

His hand is trembling.

Breath coming strained in broken pants. His cheeks are slick and hot and he must’ve started crying at some point but he doesn’t know when. “I don’t,” he gasps, but the words are gone. Shattered.

Luckily, perhaps, they do not need to return. His arm is dropped and strong, warm, arms wrap around him, pulling him against the rough wool of Washington’s breast. “Not you too, my boy,” He whispers. There is something wet where he presses his face to Benjamin’s neck. “Please, Benjamin. Not you too.”

His body moves while his mind struggles, helplessly, to catch up. His hands find trembling shoulders, and his knees begin to buckle.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](tooeasilyconsidered.tumblr.com)


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